Monday, August 06, 2007

I have a sound effect in my inventory that I like to use for those situations when someone is away from the keyboard, or otherwise distracted. It is a weather alarm, with three ear-piercing beeping noises. Johnthomas used it on me when I was (Away) once, and I never forgot it. It is the easiest--if freakiest--way to summon someone quickly back to Second Life. I used it today on a real estate prospect, who drifted away as she stood on my property. Three blasts later she apologized, saying she'd been IMing friends and emailing acquaintances, and wondered what the weather was going to be like today/tomorrow.I produced a storm cloud and wore it over my head. (Jenny made it for me.) The real estate market was soft, I told her. We ended up standing on the bottom land I'd sold a month earlier. "See that face" I said, pointing to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's face in the distance. "It greets us every sunrise in vibrant colors. The land is alive and special. Not to mention edible." I scooped up a handful and began eating it."You sick bastard," she said, backing up. "Let me call a doctor."While waiting for the doctor, she explained that since my land had disowned me, basically, I was a "bastard," and since eating the land would surely sicken me, I was a "sick bastard."True, I thought; beautifully expressed.I mentioned to her the community pool. Surely it wasn't cursed, as far as I knew. It wasn't built on any burial grounds, either, except, due to the barbecue grill, it was a boneyard for countless chickens. "But that's because they were born that way--meaty," I explained. "There's nothing haunted about a departed chicken, either" I assured her (without her asking me to). Finally, I offered this rumination: "If only chickens weren't born with feathers to begin with..." At that point, I was thinking specifically about life without any feathers at all, and how much easier it would be. I expressed how much of a pain in the youknowwhat it was to render chicken apart from those pesky feathers. "Can we not just create a featherless chicken?" I demanded.One of her IM friends apparently had an emergency at this point and she had to leave. I wished her well, but by the time "well" got out of my fingers, she was gone.I wished her "well well" after she was gone.